She should be released. But probably she refused to accept the offered term, likely to admit wrong doing according to the Chinese law.<p>The crux of this type of incident is that, one who are aligned herself with western style of morality, would find Chinese laws often to be incompatible with those values. Often such conflict were named "authoratarian" "dictative" etc.<p>As a matter of fact, just like a lot of laws were passed in US without much democratic debate, <i>most</i> laws in China have no democratic debate in the process. There is public opinion collection phase, which does not have a open process. And that were seldom publicized for obvious distrust of the common people's judgement.<p>Then this lady probably did herself the ultimate sacrifice in practicing hungry strike, for proclaiming her own righteousness.<p>Unfortunately, this type of self sacrifice was not useful in changing the people's perception and mentality.<p>I always suggest people like her, western alike, to take a constructive approach to alter the CCP's behavior. I.e., one can always start by educating the normal citizens about the western values, one person after another.<p>Explicit and revolutionary conflicts are exciting, and probably can bring changes really quick. Like CCP did before, transformed the largest nation on earth from an old emperism led system to a socializism totalitarian system, in less than a few decades. But that causes a lot of human suffering, probably the worst in human history.<p>So, as I said, I want Ms. Zhang to keep herself healthy and strong. If she was imprisoned wrongly. Let the system know that you want to fight in a way that yielding is not an option, by actually living well.